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3,000 Chinese Indians were detained in the Deoli internment camp during the China-India conflicts in the 1960s. Many have now made Toronto home.

Moses Cheng (left) and Andy Hsieh, born and raised in India, were interned at the Deoli camp during the China-India conflicts in 1960s. Both moved to Toronto after their release. (Nicholas Keung / Toronto Star)

By Nicholas KeungImmigration Reporter

Fri., Nov. 16, 2012

Fifty years ago this month, 18-year-old Andy Hsieh was having breakfast at the Don Bosco school in Assam, India, when he was sent to the principal’s office. There, he and all the other ethnic Chinese students at the Catholic boys’ school were confronted by rifle-toting Indian soldiers.

“They want all of you. They want to protect you,” said the principal, an old priest from Spain. “I told them I could take care of you, but they said: ‘No, this is an order.’ Go pack everything, your books, so at least you can read and study.”

The students boarded a van for a long journey that took them, along with thousands of other ethnic Chinese, to the Deoli internment camp in northwest India.

It was November 1962; China had just declared war against India over their disputed border, and ethnic Chinese were suddenly the enemy.

The mass internment lasted four years, and afterward many of the ex-detainees and their families, including Hsieh’s, fled to Canada. Five decades later, the GTA is home to 10,000 Indians of Chinese origin.

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On Sunday, they will gather at the Toronto Commander Park Recreation Centre to commemorate their forgotten history.

Hsieh, now 68, was born in Calcutta, as were his parents, three brothers and two sisters. Like many other Chinese migrants, theirs was a family of entrepreneurs, who ran a shoe factory, leather tannery and restaurants.

For generations, they lived peaceably in India, but by the 1960s, as the tension between China and India escalated, they came to be viewed as spies and traitors.

Overnight, the Chinese were told they would have to register and report to authorities daily. Many were fired from their jobs, and forced to renew their residential permits.

Hsieh and his brothers were reunited with their parents at Deoli, where about 3,000 Chinese Indians were detained.

“We shared a barrack with a few families. We were in Wing 4. We were given two meals a day and couldn’t go anywhere,” recalled Hsieh. He met Moses Cheng, who remains a good friend, at the camp.

Cheng, then 16, was born and raised in Darjeeling in northeast India. He was taken from his family home in November 1962.

“We lost our freedom. We feared what’s next,” said Cheng, 67, whose family was released in 1964 after a friend in Calcutta acted as guarantor.

But there was nothing to return to, said Cheng. Most found their properties, businesses and homes had been seized by the government or taken over by Indians.

That sad history would have been forgotten with the passing of many ex-internees, if not for Sheng Lin, who first heard of the internment of the Chinese from his father-in-law a few years ago.

Few young people who are Chinese-Indian-Canadian know the story, often because their parents and grandparents are reluctant to relive the pain.

“There is not much conversation about it, and people are afraid to talk,” said Lin, 43, who came here from Calcutta in 1988. “In order to move forward, we need to educate the next generation.”

Inspired by Ottawa’s 2006 decision to offer the Chinese community redress for the racist “head tax” once imposed on Chinese immigrants, the group has asked India to erect a monument at Deoli to honour the Chinese Indians detained there.

Hsieh and Cheng said they would like to see the monument in their lifetime, and maybe even get an apology from the Indian government.

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